Trace: Shame and the Art of Mourning

Abstract

This chapter explores performative memorialisation engaging with two questions: If the experience of dying, death and mourning are socially constructed, how does shame-affect (Tomkins in Affect Imagery Consciousness: Volume 1. Springer, New York, 1962) complicate the processes of autobiographical performance making? Secondly, how might the shame/identity index be subverted through autobiographical performance? The questions emerged in response to the ‘disjunctions that occur between one’s own experience and the official narratives set out to explain it’ (Muncey in Creating Autoethnographies. Sage, London, p. 10, 2010). I investigate whether my own experience of loss, in contrast to the culturally sanctioned expression of loss (or Muncey’s ‘it’), is mediated through shame-affect and cultural rituals. The solo, autobiographical performance Time Piece (2012–2014) is the focus of this enquiry presenting a triptych of mourning narratives: mum, dad and partner Rebecca. I explore whether mourning shame complicates the processes of interpreting, writing, and performing autobiographical narratives of mourning and how (dis)identification (Muñoz in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999) can disrupt the shame/identity index.